There and back again

The second stretch of the Pennine Way has been planned since the first one two months ago, so yesterday Monkey and I took the train to Glossop and retraced our steps across the troll bridge and up the boggy valley to what is known as Doctor's Gate and rejoined the Pennine Way to cross Devil's Dyke and Shelf Moor towards Bleaklow Head. From there we followed the precipitous Clough Edge and descended to the chain of reservoirs that led us, via the Trans Pennine Trail, (finally) to Hadfield. On the map it is big loop, but we didn't quite go in a complete circle as the train home bypassed Glossop.

This time we were armed with a newly acquired map cover so there would be no struggling to check the route:

and we paid close attention to the stone arrows, though they are not necessarily as frequent as you need and you still have to sometimes just follow your nose.

The previous walk's cottongrass had been superseded by the heather:

and instead of the carcass of the aeroplane we discovered this skeleton; at first glance I thought was a rabbit, but on closer inspection it appears to be a large bird of prey, the flesh rotted away but clumps of feathers still obvious in the mud:

The handy Pennine Way distance calculator tells me we walked over twelve miles, and climbed again to nearly 2,000 feet.